Hours after city of San Antonio and police union officials reached an agreement on a new labor contract, Deputy City Manager María Villagómez said the deal — which took a little over one year to negotiate — was one of the most expeditious in recent history.
Joined by union officials and key members of the city's negotiating team, Villagómez said she was "very satisfied" with the proposed contract.
"I feel good," Villagómez, who lead the city's negotiating team, said Wednesday. "I think we are delivering an agreement that is beneficial to our community and is also fair to our police officers."
The proposed 140-page agreement — which strengthens disciplinary measures for officers accused of misconduct and includes a significant wage increase — needs to be voted on by the union's members, with 51 percent required for approval. The City Council must also approve it.
Sgt. Christopher Lutton, head of the union's negotiating team, expects the union's roughly 2,300 members to vote on the contract in April. Villagómez hopes the City Council will vote by summer.
At that point, the contract would go into effect immediately and run through September 2027.
The deal marked a significant milestone for city and union officials. Last time, it took them more than two years of intermittent and often contentious negotiations to reach terms of a new collective bargaining agreement.
The process went faster because of a host of factors, including mounting community pressure for police reform, a change in union and city leadership, and the looming threat of rising health care premiums, people familiar with the negotiations said.
The city and the union's current agreement expired at the end of September. An evergreen clause kept most terms of the contract in place for eight years — except for a clause regarding health care that increased premiums for union members by 10 percent annually for each year the contract remained in evergreen status.
"It's a conglomerate of things that made negotiations a little bit smoother, a little bit more amicable," said Demonte Alexander, a political and public affairs consultant. "It's a different time. It's different leadership. It's the city and union learning from their mistakes. All of those things played a role."
The agreement comes less than a year after voters rejected a ballot measure that would have stripped the San Antonio Police Officers Association of its right to collectively bargain with the city.
While Proposition B failed by a razor-thin margin, political experts and community activists said the close vote served as a wake-up call for the union.
"I do think that the union and city was feeling some pressure from the community, and maybe even from City Council, to reach certain terms," said Ananda Tomas, executive director of ACT 4 SA, a nonprofit group focused on police reform. "The union was probably aware that it needed to make some concessions in order to show the community that it was acting in good faith."
Why things were different
City and police union officials credited the quick deal to the congenial tone of the negotiations.
"A lot of credit goes to the association and the membership," Villagómez said. "I think they showed up with the intent of negotiating in good faith."
Villagómez said the threat of rising health care premiums for union members also likely pushed union leadership to quickly work out a deal. That was something union and city negotiators changed during the previous round of talks.
With the new deal, union members will no longer be subject to automatic 10 percent yearly premium increases. Members will have two options: a consumer-driven plan that has high deductibles but no monthly premiums for officers, their spouses or their children; or a standard plan with lower deductibles that includes monthly premiums for dependents but not the officers themselves.
Alexander, the political consultant, said a few more factors likely influenced the negotiations.
One key difference in this round of negotiations was a change in leadership.
Last year, John "Danny" Diaz took over as president of the Police Officers Association. He replaced retired Detective Mike Helle, who served five terms as the union boss and often had a contentious relationship with city leaders.
City Manager Sheryl Sculley also retired, replaced by City Manager Erik Walsh.
"Erik has a completely different style," Alexander said. "That's not to say that Sheryl had a bad leadership style. It was just different."
Since well before the last agreement expired, Sculley had been warning that the city could face financial hardships if it didn't rein in spending on health care for police officers and firefighters.
For decades, public safety personnel had been receiving health insurance for themselves, their spouses and their dependents essentially for free. Sculley pushed hard to implement monthly premiums, shifting some of the burden to the employees.
But rank-and-file police officers didn't see it that way, describing it as an attack on their livelihoods. At one point, the union launched a series of personal attack ads on Sculley.
"That campaign did get a little personal," Alexander said. "That maybe stalled negotiations, and prevented them from moving along as fast as they could have."
Alexander said city and union officials also likely learned a lot during the last round of negotiations.
Over two years, the two sides traded countless proposals. They seemed near a deal in fall 2015 after reaching a consensus on salary and health care issues, but things fell apart after the city insisted on eliminating the contract's evergreen clause.
At one point, the city filed lawsuits against the police union, as well as the San Antonio Professional Firefighters Association, asking the court to declare the evergreen clause a violation of the Texas Constitution.
In 2016, after the 4th Court of Appeals ordered the city and the police union into nonbinding mediation, the two sides finally reached a deal. As a part of the agreement, the city dropped its lawsuit.
"People are learning from their previous mishaps," Alexander said. "I think the city learned that lawsuits are costly. The union learned that it needs to make some concessions."
New focus
This time around, the negotiations garnered a different focus — partly because of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020.
His death and the subsequent conviction of former officer Derek Chauvin cast an intense spotlight on police misconduct.
After Floyd's death, some community activists — locally and nationally — turned their attention to what they described as the overwhelming influence of police unions and how to rein that in.
City and police union negotiators began meeting in February, and they met about three dozen times over the course of one year.
In the end, the two sides reached a deal on several elements of the disciplinary process.
Under the new contract, police officers must be informed 24 hours prior to being questioned by internal affairs — down from 48 hours in the previous contract. The internal affairs unit investigates allegations of misconduct against police officers.
Villagómez said that change "allows us to schedule those interviews a lot quicker and be able to address that discipline in a more steady, fast manner."
During such an interview or interrogation, which is led by internal affairs staff, the officer involved is able to review statements, video recordings, audio recordings and photographs regarding the incident.
However, the officer won't be able to view statements or recordings from other officers being investigated — another key change from the last contract. Officers also aren't able to take copies of evidence.
"That gives those officers the ability to be on the same playing field," Villagómez said. "There's fairness in the process because they don't get to see what the other officers said. They're just basing it on their own understanding and their own knowing of the facts."
After an investigation is complete, it is forwarded to the police chief's complaint and administrative review board, which consists of seven community members and seven police officers.
The board suggests discipline to the police chief, who makes the final determination. However, it does not have the authority to request additional evidence or make policy recommendations.
At that point, the chief imposes discipline. Under the proposed contract, the chief must punish officers within 180 days of learning about allegations of misconduct, rather than 180 days after the misconduct occurred.
There's a two-year statute of limitation, meaning the chief can't impose discipline if the misconduct occurred after two years. However, that statute of limitations doesn't apply for allegations of criminal behavior.
Perhaps the biggest change to the disciplinary process involves arbitrators' ability to overturn the chief's disciplinary decisions.
By various estimates, about two-thirds of fired officers who appealed their terminations in the past decade have returned to the force — either reinstated by Police Chief William McManus to avoid a drawn-out appeals process or by independent arbitrators.
Under the deal reached Wednesday, if the city proves that the misconduct occurred and the officers' conduct is "in some way detrimental to effective law enforcement and the needs of the department" or fails to meet community expectations, the arbitrator cannot reinstate the officer.
The deal also gives the city more power to appeal an arbitrator's decision to District Court.
"If the arbitrator does not stay within those parameters, then the ability for us and the opportunity for us to appeal that decision is much broader than before," Villagómez said.
Lutton, the lead negotiator for the union, said the changes to the disciplinary provisions helped "solidify the process."
"We believe the process has stayed true to give the employee a chance to give their side of the story and also try to rebut anything," Lutton said. "I think it still gives the employee a recourse if they believe something has been done wrong."
Pay increases
Tomas of ACT 4 SA said the proposed contract is a good start.
"We have a contract with more oversight and more accountability than ever before," said Tomas, who helped lead the effort to put Proposition B on the ballot last year. "But it should be clear that more reform is still needed."
Tomas believes two key contract provisions still need to be changed: the evergreen clause and the scope of the chief's complaint and administrative review board.
"It's not really a civilian oversight system," Tomas said. "We should have an independent office of civilian oversight that's not part of the contract. They should have the ability to make policy recommendations to the chief, the ability to run independent investigations if they need to. They should be able to subpoena officers, or have the ability to host community conversations."
Under the proposed contract, police officers will receive wage increases of 3.5 percent in 2023 and 2024 and 4 percent in 2025 and 2026. Each officer will also receive a lump sum payment equal to 2 percent of their annual salary within 30 days of the City Council approving the agreement.
The increase makes San Antonio police officers the second-highest-paid in the state behind their counterparts in Austin, a city spokeswoman said.
Tomas said she worries the pay increases would prohibit the city from achieving its own goal of maintaining public safety spending at less than 66 percent of the general fund budget.
"I am concerned about what this means — if cuts are going to be made to other parts of the budget to keep up," Tomas said. "It's a double-edged sword because we need to make sure police officers are well-paid and taken care of, but also they are the second-highest-paid officers in the state, and there are other areas that are already underfunded."
Villagómez said the city will be able to afford the pay increases while still maintaining public safety spending.
She noted that a roughly 15 percent increase in wages over four years is much lower than what the union proposed. At one point in the negotiations, the union called for a roughly 21 percent increase, Villagómez said.
She also pushed back against calls to shorten the evergreen clause and increase the scope of the chief's review board.
"From our perspective, the way that our current disciplinary process works, the jurisdiction of the arbitrator was most important to change," Villagómez said. "Negotiation takes two, and you have to make adjustments."
Alexander, the political analyst, said he expects the City Council to approve the contract — though there likely will be some objections from the council's more progressive and conservative members.
"I imagine some of your more progressive folks will say it doesn't go far enough, and then you may have some people on the far right side that say it goes too far," Alexander said.
"But if I'm an elected official, any step in the right direction is something I want to be part of," Alexander said. "I'm not saying this contract is perfect, because no contract is. But I think a majority of the council members and a majority of the community will see this as a step in the right direction."
___
(c)2022 the San Antonio Express-News
Visit the San Antonio Express-News at www.mysanantonio.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
